A post where OneSTDV asserted that women, credulous creatures that they be, are largely to blame for the medical industrial complex and social hypochondria (his phrases) made me wonder what the GSS has to tell us about sex differences on questions relating to the willingness to speak openly without regard to the sacred cows that may be impaled as a consequence, personal health, and what Half Sigma deems the Gaia Cult. I didn't make the time to investigate at the time. Ah well, better late than never.

When it comes to rocking the boat by making provocative statements, women are more inclined towards biting their tongues for the sake of social harmony than men are. The GSS posed the following question: "Some people think that it's important to stand up for your own opinion even if it makes others around you uncomfortable. Others think that it's better to keep your views to yourself if they would make others around you uncomfortable. Which position comes closer to your view?" While 44.2% of women said it was better to keep views to oneself, only 35.4% of men did.

Parenthetically, ideals and actions are not in perfect alignment here. A slim majority of women and a sizable majority of men claim to think it is better for a person to be honest than accommodating, yet the people who actually put this into practice when the issue is something combustible like racial differences in intelligence constitute a tiny minority, at least when in public.

Gauging sex differences in susceptibility to what OneSTDV describes as Big Pharma's attempt to scare people into taking psychiatric drugs for a motley mix of symptoms including headaches, insomnia, fatigue, backache, dizziness, lightheadedness, and low appetite that might be symptomatic of depression is a little tricky because what the survey provides in width, it lacks in depth. It is rare for the questions to reach the necessary level of complexity.

I found one that comes reasonably close to getting after what we want, though. It asks respondents how likely they would be to take doctor-prescribed psychiatric medication because they are feeling depressed, having trouble falling asleep and concentrating, and feeling worthless. Among men, 40.8% reported being either somewhat or very likely to take the drug, while 48.6% of women did.

As for the Gaia Cult, most of the iconoclastic views are held by men, as 38.1% of them agree or strongly agree with the statement that "many of the claims about environmental threats are exaggerated," compared to 28.1% of women.

This is hardly a novelty. Men are consistently more skeptical of sacred claims than women are, and Gaia worship is vying with diversity for becoming the official religion of the Western world. To determine what a society holds sacred, simply find out what is utterly closed to questioning of any kind. It's not Christianity, which is certainly not above reproach. By branding CAGW skeptics the new racists, Al Gore is opening the divine door to both the Gaia Cult and diversity by grouping together those who question the holiness of either of them.